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Maternal preconception and gender selection has long been a controversial topic. Are you more likely to conceive a boy if you eat red meat, and a girl if you make love under a full moon? Oldwives tales and fantasies exploring sexual position, diet, and dominance circulate the Internet however how can we logically distinguish between fact and fiction?
The topic has widespread cultural implications. Sex-related abortions are on the increase in China and India where local customs and religious virtues appear to strongly correlate with the systematic elimination of girls.
In an effort to challenge the dogma of chance fertilization two main research streams have explored variations in maternal condition and gender conception. The ‘Maternal Dominance’ hypothesis has suggested trait dominance, underpinned by serum testosterone, correlates with increased male conception rates. The second, ‘Maternal condition’ hypothesis relates to pre-conceptual maternal diet, investigating variations in both quantity and quality of diet and effects on sex ratios. However such assumptions have been difficult to replicate and more recent evidence has suggested changes in maternal condition may have a stronger influence
Maternal adaptations in behavior appear to closely correlate with biased gender ratios and can have wider connotations on sex-linked disease inheritance. However unless we can identify molecular mechanisms influencing the intrauterine environment and follicular development, hypothesis will remain mere assumptions.

Mendelian inheritance is a term sometimes used to describe patterns of inheritance, based on the original ideas of dominant and recessive genes, first proposed by the Gregorian Monk Mendel. Determining patterns of inheritance is greatly aided by the use of pedigrees. Drawing out the ‘family tree’ and highlight affected individuals is a good way of noting down a lot of information without having to write much, and also makes the pattern easier to spot.

The continuation and progress of the human condition has been founded on the inheritance of knowledge. With each generation, the lessons learnt are passed on as another valuable brick in the pyramid towards the pinnacle of human success. However, just as progress necessitates the study of the phenomenon in question, the educational system itself has become a topic of scrutiny. Having been a student for most of my life and a mentor intermittently (whether as the fearless older sister or a tutor for other students), the architecture of the educational system is something that I have often pondered over. My dual citizenship in two very different cultures has provided me with two strains of the education system — one of Taiwanese, the other American — to juxtapose. No educational system is perfect, and I don’t believe it is possible to create a curriculum that can be “one size fits all.” That being said, as a current medical student, I often talk to past, current, and future medical students and wonder why medical school is so difficult? While the analogy of “drinking from a fire hose” parallels the insane amount of knowledge we must absorb within the given timeline and contributes to the difficulty of medical education, I find it hard to believe that time-pressed content is the sole reason. I believe that the attitudes and expectations already planted in our minds, the curriculum design, and the methods of student evaluation are crucial factors — just to mention a few — that contribute to the hefty weight that we carry as medical students.

The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness was a 1912 book by the American psychologist and eugenicist Henry H. Goddard. The work was an extended case study of Goddard's for the inheritance of "feeble-mindedness," a general category referring to a variety of mental disabilities including mental retardation, learning disabilities, and mental illness. Goddard concluded that a variety of mental traits were hereditary and society should limit reproduction by people possessing these traits.